Is karate's ranking system all it's cracked up to obi?

Had coffee with a friend today who had studied chado while she was teaching English in Japan. She was a student for about 15 months and noted that she became upset with her sensei. We talked about the differences and similarities between karate and chado. At one point she asked me why I did not teach karate as a career. I told her that doing so had never been a desire of mine. I think it boils down to the way I perceive karate and how it is (or should be) taught. And how the general public perceives karate - as a service.

The next sentence out of her mouth was music to my ears: "my sensei once told me that it takes a lifetime to master the art."

I told her that the same applies for karate.

She seemed shocked by this statement. I figure most people would likely have the same reaction. People see karate as a pursuit of a number of funny-colored belts. They see 80 year-old grannies with black belts, they see 10 year-old kids with black belts. Everyone and his dog seem to have black belts (and yes, you can buy keikogi for dogs), so how can it be a lifetime pursuit. Isn't karate something you can master and accomplish in 2-5 years? Well, you can learn the basics of karate in that time, but mastery is a whole different story. And as for the belt issue, well, that is one that adds a whole new dimension on to what karate has become and how it has been disseminated over the past 70 or so years.

You see, the ranking system is not part of traditional karate. In fact, the process does not even come from karate. It originated with the Japanese board game Go. Kano Jigoro adopted it for Judo and borrowed the black sash concept from swimming levels, giving the first kuro obi to his senior students. The kyu system was introduced, according to legend, by a Japanese judoka teaching in France. He incorporated different levels of colored belt as a means to seperate levels of learning and motivate his students. From there, it was adopted by martial arts, yet with seemingly little to no standardization.

In all honesty, I don't know whether to blame the Japanese or the French. OK, I'll just blame the French. All joking aside, let's review this again. Your art's ranking structure is borrowed from a board game. And a competitive sport.

Prior to the belt thing, people studied karate simply to study karate. It was a way of life. For those of you who have read Funakoshi's Karate-do: My Way of Life, you will recall that he speaks of spending countless time learning one kata. In the old days, this was how it was done. No belts. No gradings. Just peeling back the layer of one kate before going on to the next.

Sounds similar to practising a ritual tea preparation over and over again before learning a new one. Precise movements, exacting and refined measures. Attention paid to the smallest details that can make or break the process. It is an exercise in moving meditation. An act in which the preparer and all the elements of the ceremony are one. One could imagine how beautiful karate could be if all practised it in this manner. And not to be totally cynical, some people still do.

Said process is a far cry from how we 'prepare' tea here. Boil water, grab a cup, toss in a bag, wait. Sounds a bit like a rote process with little attention paid to anything. I know how to 'make' tea, so I do it. A far cry from the 'way of tea', no? Again, an act where one would pay attention to minutiae of the activity in reverent fashion: the way the tea is measured, how the water is poured. How hard and fast it is whisked, how it is poured and served, etc. Even the drinking of said tea has a ritual. Yet, one spends countless hours making it all perfect... and each time seeking to make this time more perfect than the last.

Quite a different thought from 'learning' a karate kata in four months. We say we "know" a kata, but do we really know kata at all? Just because I can perform this or that kata for a grading, does it mean that I know it? The answer is 'not really'. I remember a story my Matsubayashi-ryu sensei once told me of a student who asked a senior Matsubayashi instructor how many karate he knew. The sensei replied, "I think I know fukyugata ichi (basic kata)."

Truly, if I were to have to answer the same question, I don't know what my answer would be. Sure I can perform many kata, I even still have decent recollection of my Matsubayashi kata and some kobudo kata. But to go so far as to say I 'know' them would be quite arrogant and untrue. I have a rudiment understanding of them. I can perform them with speed and power. But, knowing them is pushing it. They say that to perform a kata 1000 is to have a basic understanding of the kata. 10000 times is needed to make it a part of you. Performing it is not the same as learning it and practising it. Performing it consists of analysis and application of said analysis. Kata simply done as movements without the process of synthesizing and refining reduces it to a mere series of movements in a pattern. It is a fool's dance with no music. It is like the act of 'making' tea. Form with no substance, no effort, no heart. Moving Zen, minus the zen.

Yet, we ask people to perform these kata as part of an artificial process as they move towards some goal, an artificial goal at that. Our system of ranking has rendered the whole notion of practising karate as a way of life lost for the most part. It is now something that is done a few hours a week. And we strive to achieve artificial markers of understanding of this way, thinking that we are indeed accomplishing something. Yet, we are accomplishing something. We are scratching the surface of an infinite ball of knowledge, one whose secrets and gems will be hidden from us and will haunt long after our bodies are unable to practice the most rudiment of movements.

I tell my students that achieving a black belt does not express mastery of karate. It expresses mastery of the basics. Even then, that is only one part of the equation. To the chado practitioner, that is like knowing how to do all the individual movements without the benefit of being able to put them together. Nor the ability to appreciate them. And if one does not look inward to understanding the kata beyond what they appear to be, then we our progress stalls and all we would appear to be doing is learn more new 'dance moves' to add to the collection.

This is not meant to be a slight against people who teach karate as a profession. Nor is it meant to say that those who teach it as a hobby do any better. I know people who do both, some do it better than others. End of the day, it is what they do, right or wrong, good or bad. They did not change it, they simply followed a model that began long before most of us were born. The only difference with us is that our society, for the most part, rendered it an activity, a hobby, a pastime. Many people join karate and apply the same effort they put in to making tea. Movements. Effort, but no appreciation for the final product.

People pay for the service and expect a return for their investment. They learn the kata, they can do the kata, good or bad, they deserve the belt, no? That's not a decision I can make unilaterally or a statement that I can support unequivocally. That's the sensei's job to do at their own dojo level. They need to do what's best for their students and themselves.

What makes me sad is the fact that we have lost a great deal of what karate was: a way of life. In the same way that other arts are still practised with the same discipline and intent now as they were a hundred or two hundred years ago, the same cannot be said of karate. The Pandora's box that was adopting a kyu/dan system cannot be unopened. In that way, the genie that is modern karate cannot be stuffed back in the bottle, to be traded for the old ways.

The best we can do is to make our way on the floor, maintain a humble attitude of being a perpetual student, willing to explore our art to the best of our ability, regardless of rank. And every time we practise kata, we do so with the mind of an eager beginner who seeks to render an unblemished interpretation of a kata - each and every kata we 'know', each and every time.

And perhaps, by the time our days on this rock are done and our last breath has been drawn, we will have inched just that much closer to having mastered karate-do, karate as a way of life.